


A day in the afterlife

by Cappyforever, hikarufly, Naphta85



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:46:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8673148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cappyforever/pseuds/Cappyforever, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikarufly/pseuds/hikarufly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naphta85/pseuds/Naphta85
Summary: After "a night" on Darillium, the Doctor is back in space, spending time as he likes, on his own. But is he alone?This was an idea I had with my good friends while we were out for the weekend, celebrating some birthdays of our company. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did creating it.English is not my first language.





	

The lights of the TARDIS were low yet brightening the control room. The warm-coloured lights from the console, the tower in the middle, the round things and the walls made the ambience cosy and relatively welcoming.

The Doctor was looking at his blackboard. A brooding mood was painted all over his face, as he did not dare to touch the dusted surface with his fingers, for fear of cancelling the words. He turned the blackboard to the other side, blank and ready. There was something missing. He sighed, and took off his jacket, only to leave it on the hanger next to the board. He wore his white immaculate shirt, his black waistcoat and trousers and his boots.

He knew now where the Aldebaran Brandy was: River had inadvertently showed him at Christmas, but he was not in the mood for spirits. He needed the strong, full-bodied and Earthly flavour of a good wine. He climbed down the stairs of the mezzanine, and continued down to the lower decks and went ahead into one of the internal corridors of his spaceship. Two turns right, one left, two downwards, five upwards, one set of traffic lights ahead and two river-crossing brought him to the TARDIS cellar.

It was a long gallery with a low barrel vault ceiling. White rays of light from both sides enlightened the space, and the Doctor walked down the gallery as passing through an invisible saluting army. His steps resounded in the cellar, full of old bottles of many shapes, in clear yet muffled sounds. They had different amount of dust on them. He found what he was looking for: a bottle of red French wine, a Cabernet Franc of 1618, from the personal collection of a very famous statesman.

«This was a gift.» he said, out loud, and his Scottish accent echoed in the slightly moistly atmosphere around him. He waited for a question that did not come. He resisted a sigh.

«Cardinal Richelieu gave it to me when I visited his country residence. He thought we looked very much alike... I cannot imagine why.» he added, taking the bottle between his hands. The dust was not as much as on more recent acquisitions, as he had met the Cardinal after he had been awarded with one of the first Moët and Chandon vintage bottles from the 1860s. Time was indeed a big ball of... stuff.

«It always amazes me what Humans have done with time.» he started to say, looking at the label as he was trying to find long lost secrets between the small hand-written letters.

«Transforming earth and sun and rain into something so full of scent and taste.» he continued. He moved from the cellar, and bringing the bottle with him he found, after a corner or two of the long TARDIS corridors, a small parlour. It wouldn't seem out of place in a stately home in the English countryside, with unearthly scenes of long lost planets painted with oil on canvas. There was a fireplace under a big alien portrait, a sofa, a low table, a small library, and little more furniture. The walls were covered with a lovely wallpaper designed especially by William Morris for the Doctor. By the fireplace there was a small wooden box. He turned around as he got near the sofa, as he had felt a cold wind coming from a door that he had left ajar. His attention, then, was again on his bottle. He placed it on a small round table and took out a bottle opener from the wooden box. He took off his cuff-links on his wrists and rolled up his sleeves up to his elbows with slow and elegant moves, yet without ostentation. The fabric folded around the slightly starched shirt cuffs, leaving his wrists and forearms naked and graceful.  
He took off the Cardinal's wax seal and dived the opener into the cork cap, in swift turns. The bottle opened with a small “pop” and the Doctor retrieved a glass from a cabinet next to the table.  
The scent of the wine filled the air around him while the liquid, in a swirling current, filled the glass as a stream. He felt the aroma and fragrance, probed the substance of the wine by looking at it through a direct light and then tasted it. It fell down his throat and filled him with the strength of the rain that swelled the grapes and the sun that ripened it.

«Everything has a past, a present, and a future. Even things long dead like the grapes in this wine.» the Doctor said, drinking again from his glass, and sitting next to the fireplace.  
«I met Madame the Pompadour through a fireplace like this.» he continued. «I was young, I was... dashing. River was so impressed.»

Mentioning her, and that moment, made his smile sadder.

«She was so distraught when she understood I didn't know her at all. Too much of everything, it was overwhelming.»  
He was looking at the flames like he was searching for an answer of some kind.

«Past, present, future. One should be entitled to all of them, but sometimes we are not.» he continued, like he was interrupted by somebody and was looking for the thread of a previous conversation. «I have ripped many people of their memories. I did it without hesitation, sometimes, most of all without thinking about the consequences. If you can't remember something, you cannot suffer by it, and it may seem merciful.»  
He did not hear it, but in the cracking of a piece of wood, a small tear was shed, and not by him. He was not alone.  
Clara was there, under an invisibility fabric, a sort of coat or cloak: distant planets have remarkable technology, even without wires or flashing lights. The cloth she was wearing worked with the perception of your eye and of your hear, and worked much like the mirror in interrogation rooms: you could perfectly see through it, while your suspect in front of the policeman could only see his surroundings.

«But it is not merciful, not at all. Humans... they cannot recall anything if you wipe their memory but they will always have that feeling that something is missing. Donna Noble, she is like that. You can glimpse the slight sensation in her eyes when she is about to recall some amazing adventure she had, some wonderful thing she did, and then... all is gone and things get back to normality.» he continued, drinking the wine again, mindfully yet preparing to continue his speech addressed to...  
«And you see, it breaks my heart to see it, so I tend to try and keep away. But I miss her. I miss all of them, and then...»

His pondering was interrupted. He heard a ringing coming from the fireplace: he touched a spot on the mantelpiece and a screen came out of the wall: there was a call from the control room.

He put the glass down and ran through the many corridors to find the console room, and picked up the phone.

«Hello?» he asked, almost mistrustfully.

«Is this the Doctor?» asked an high-pitched, childish voice.

«I never cured anyone.» he replied. «Do you need a doctor?»

«I...» said the voice, after a few seconds. «I feel a bit lonely.»

The Doctor frowned a bit.

«Are you on your own?» he asked.

«Not really... mummy is downstairs, watching TV.» the little girl on the phone explained. «But I keep thinking about Miss Oswald.»

The Doctor took a moment, and his face did not change at all. Perhaps something in his eyes, but...

«Do you miss her?» he asked.

«Yeah.» she replied, with a big sigh. The Doctor looked more lost now.

«I think she misses you too.» said the alien, in a tone that betrayed his awkwardness. The little girl, he knew it, smiled.

«I think so too.» she replied, and then, after a moment, she added: «Thanks. »

«You're welcome...» The Doctor looked around almost in panic.

«Do you miss her?» was the next question. The Doctor's hearts could betray him, but did not. Not in front of invisible Clara, that had followed him.

«It's Maebh, by the way» the little girl presented herself. «Do you remember me?»

«The little girl from the forest of London.» he stated, as an answer.

«Are you okay, Doctor?» she asked then, in the most innocent of manners.

Clara saw the bleeding of his hearts, and even though he believed himself alone, he pulled himself together.

«Bye, Maebh.» he said, and closed the communication.

The TARDIS console gargled a little bit, her lights blinking to him as to request help.  
With his sleeves still up and his jacket abandoned on the mezzanine, he moved around to the panels where a problem might be. He sat on a sort of suspended swing made of a couple of ropes and reels, attached to a leathery seat. He had used it before. He found his goggles and put them on. He started to fiddle with wires, and smiled, but with a sort of flirty benevolence.  
«I see you wanted attention.» he murmured. «This is but a little problem... I will fix it, don't worry.»  
Clara couldn't help but smile at his way of talking to his spaceship: like an old girlfriend, still together. She had been jealous, and she still was, as he was working on some circuits.  
His hands were spotted and dirty like those of a mechanic, but retained the grace of those of a poet, stained only by the ink of words. He treated circuits and pieces of cable like objects of value, like hair on a woman's head.  
Clara was watching him work at a small distance, now, and resisted a sigh. Those hands, she thought about the way they could caress her, and she felt her body tense up. She had decided to see him again, one more time, one last time, for she felt the moment of returning to Gallifrey was approaching. When Ashildr realised that Clara had no intention of just considering the idea but to fulfil it anyway, strongly protested against it, but could do very little to stop her.

She didn't want to recall that argument. She was there, and there was the Doctor: this was all that mattered.

Suddenly, a small explosion spread out coloured sparkles, and after a millisecond the Doctor took his goggles off to watch more closely. Clara wanted to warn him, but it seemed that the explosion had done the work.

«Good as new.» he declared, and closed the panel as some other sparkles circled his boots. The TARDIS lights glimmered as the chandeliers in a theatre just before the show starts, as a “thank you”.

He got back to the console, and did something that seemed like checking on various ongoing operations.

«Ah, I see.» he murmured «You had a problem while saving the library. The one with the pool in it. Let me...» he continued, frowning and typing something on the 1980s looking keyboard on one of the panels.

«Thank God you lost that part. I hated that all the books could get moist from the water.» he declared, and then pondered something. Clara could see the gearwheels in his head at work, under those luxuriant grey curls. The Doctor smirked, and left the place down another corridor.

Clara moved as fast as she could to follow him. There was something in his eyes, something wild: the anticipation got her too, and almost ran behind him.

When he stopped, she held back a gasp of awe.

They were in a rectangular room, more lengthy than wide, with parquet flooring and a lane-shaped pool in the middle of it, accessible by underwater stairs that let you immerse gradually. The crystal blue of the pool was mesmerising against the grey-stone walls, and especially under the ceiling, black and pointed with stars as confetti scattered by a child. It seemed like you were looking at the Universe itself, but not as much as the end of that room, where a ceiling-to-floor window offered the view on a night-time woodland landscape. It may be fiction or truth, inside the TARDIS, but that was not the point. The stars from outside and above were the only light, apart from a few spotlight underwater and on the walls. The place was filled with the magic and calmness of night-time.

«This is what I call a swimming pool.» the Doctor said, entering. There was a small chair not far from the staircase and the shorter side of the rectangle that was the pool, and that was where he could leave his clothes. Clara moved to the wall closest to the water, as the pool was slightly away from the centre of the room. She leaned on it, as he started to unbutton his waistcoat. Three buttons were opened and the piece of clothing left on the chair in a manner that could not crumple it. He kneeled down to take his boots and socks off, first, and left them under the chair. Clara could not help but follow his long fingers as he untied the shoelaces. He stood up again and in another few moments the belt was unbuckled. In a smooth yet slow movement, he took it out of the loops. He wrapped up the belt and left it with the rest as well. The sleeves of his shirt were still rolled up, but he did not unfold them. He took the shirt out of his trousers and button by button he opened it, from collar to hips, revealing no singlet under it, only pale and thin skin. If she was not stuck between a heartbeat and the other, Clara knew her heart would race by that moment. He took the shirt off and put it over the waistcoat. She indulged to watch his lean wrists, his neck and throat and the way his pummel moved slightly with his breath. He was so thin and his skin seemed only a light layer of paper... he opened his trousers too and took them off, folding them and leaving them on the chair. He wore now only a pair of what looked like black boxer briefs, difficult to say if they were a swimsuit or underwear. Clara had to put a hand on her mouth to stop herself gasping again, as it seemed he was thinking about removing those too, and get inside the water fully naked. His thumb probed the resistance of the boxer band, and every inch from hip to hip made her shiver in anticipation.

The Doctor decided for not removing them in the end, and Clara slipped down and sat on the floor, containing a deep sigh. She watched him getting inside and swimming slowly up and down the pool, with the most graceful movements. So this was what he was like when he had nobody around: an elegant gentleman, fooling around when he felt it, and revealing the demeanour of an artist when he wanted to relax. The water was ever so slightly disturbed by him, he moved just under the surface, like a dolphin, only slower and mindful. He stopped once in a while, contemplating the stars as he stood with his back against the floor, afloat, and so did Clara, in those moments.

What was she, after all? A little thing that was lost in time, frozen in a single moment, and ready to die.

When the thought was too overwhelming, he stopped for good. His breath was short and heavy, as the exercise had reached its top. He came out of the water as he went in, by the staircase. The spotlights made the drops of water glimmer on his back, dropping down in irregular lines on his back, from neck or shoulders down to his spine or sides to disappear on or under his black briefs.

More water followed as his fingers moved through his curls. The Doctor touched the walls and a small wardrobe opened: a towel to dry himself, as Clara tried to stood up. Her legs were not so stable by now: she could only think of what was still covered yet particularly visible under the wet cloth.

She then realised he needed now to take his boxers off. Without even thinking about it, she turned away as he undressed and put some dry ones on, basically the same as before, and she cursed herself for being so foolish. He would not have seen her, what harm done then to his privacy? And yet, she did not realise, that was the respect she had for him. She had seen the Doctor naked, of course, when he was young and useless in any sort of flirting or seducing, but that was different. This man she was watching now... he was her Doctor. He was a 2000 years old alien, with gravitas and mystery, and at the same time with two bleeding hearts full of love for the Universe and willingness to repair to all injustices in it.

The Doctor put on a pair of weary jeans and a white, lean T-shirt. When he turned towards her, she recognised the Black Star: David Bowie. It seemed as he had worn it many times, basically to the limits that the fabric could sustain. He put on a mortified and sad smile, as he smoothed the consumed and faint, thin cotton it was made of.

Barefoot, he moved again and Clara followed. He went back to the Morris wallpaper decorated room he had tasted wine in. The half-full glass was still there. He moved towards it, smelled his content again, and tasted it slowly. Still good, that was written on his sorrowful face. He turned, as he left the glass on the small table, again as a draft of wind had entered the parlour. His eyes were on Clara. She panicked, and then thought he was looking at the spot where she was, near the door: yet his eyes were directly in hers, and she felt all of the cosmos swirling in them.

A moment later he moved towards one of the libraries in the room: she realised the room was the same and yet the furniture was slightly different: there was an ample chaise-longue instead of one of the sofas and, almost triumphant, his black and pearly white guitar was near it, standing tall on its support.

The Doctor caressed the spines of big leather-bound books, bound by the hands of long dead monks or held by the delicate hands of maidens. He felt the wrinkles on thin paperbacks of modern economic editions, overused by working class brilliant promises, of stained and spotted hands of modern painters such as Francis Bacon. He had to give him back his Penguin's edition of Jane Eyre.

«Poor Francis...» he whispered. «He had a taste for younger men, surely, but... such a lost soul, he was.»

The Doctor sighed.

«I cannot give it back to him, not after what he has said to me.» he murmured and, leaning on the bookicase, he started to look for a passage in the book. Clara watched him loosing himself in Charlotte Brontë's novel, until he spoke.

« _I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,--you'd forget me._ »

He had read it as Rochester would had said it, as the subject he was talking to was right in front of him. He closed the book and looked at Clara again. He was looking at her, again. He left the book by his side, where it would remain, where Francis Bacon would not see it or get it back again, crying for days because the man he fell in love with, that man from the stars, had not returned.

The Doctor picked up his guitar, and laying down on the chaise longue as a decadent rock star, his shirt revealing his bellybutton and one of his feet on the ground, he embraced his guitar and played.

He played Clara's song. The song she had heard in the diner, the sad melody that was his memory of what they had said to each other in the cloisters, the music that contained their moments together, the lost words, laughs, smiles...

She could not stand still, she could not pretend still not to be there. And he knew she was there, she had just had the proof. She got closer and put a hand over his own on the guitar's keyboard. The Doctor stopped, and she could feel his pulse accelerating. His other hand left the guitar and moved towards her face, but instead it untied the lace of her invisibility garment. As a cloak, it slipped down her shoulders, revealing her little self.

«Clara.» he said, in a whisper, with a smile.

She slightly opened her lips in surprise. He put the guitar away, and composed himself a bit.

«Do you remember me?» she asked, in a low incredulous voice.

«Now I do.» he replied.

She helped him lean down again on the chaise longue, sitting next to his hips. Her right hand caressed the line of skin between his slightly lifted T-shirt and his jeans: when she found his navel he loose a breath. She continued to explore his chest under the thin layer of cotton he was wearing, feeling his ribs, as he did with her, over her jumper. She wore the same clothes she had in the trap street. She was ready.

«Is it time, isn't it? To get back, to face the Raven again?» the Doctor asked, and she could see how devastated he was at the mere notion. She nodded and got closer.

Her hand moved still over his fast-pounding hearts, the T-shirt almost up to his shoulders. His skin was colder than hers, but soft and delicate as she would have expected it to be. He started to do the same, to caress her belly even if she was sat and he was laying down, and as he reached the lace of her bra, she intercepted his hand and got it out of her clothes, and kissed it.

«All lives end, all hearts are broken.» Clara whispered. «But the love we shared, that will resonate forever, in time and in space, for you will keep it here»

She leaned to kiss his hearts, on the right and left side of his chest.

«And every life you save, every planet you rescue, every child that stops crying and laughs... there I will be. There we will be both, again and again, until the end of it all.»

He sat up on the chaise longue, taking his T-shirt off and cupping her face between his hands. He could see her big, inflating wet eyes, and he caressed her cheeks with his thumbs. No more tears. He wanted to ask why the secrecy, why she was there and what was she thinking of him: an elderly full of meaningless hobbies? A charming man yet alone and desperate? No, no more of that nonsense, no more silly masks and awkwardness. He moved towards her, and kissed her lips, delicately at first. She tasted sweet, as he tasted of French wine still. She kissed him back, she held firmly to his torso, forgetting forever how his former self kissed her, and loosing herself one moment after the other. Her head was full of stars, while her lips parted and her tongue danced with his, their breath mixing with each other and something inside her growled, like a beast ready get out and hunt. She didn't have to breathe, as she was still frozen in time, and he was not accustomed to need much air, as a Gallifreyan, but she had to stop, after a while. She had to take her jumper off, her shirt off. He kept as much contact with her as he could, a hand on her side or his forehead against hers, anything that would remind him she was real and she was there, that it was not his imagination. His fingers followed the line of her bra around her chest and she helped him with the hooks. Chest against chest, they kissed again, more eagerly, more passionately, as his hands tried their way below her dark trousers, and her nails held onto his back. He felt her silent chest, yet her nipples hardening against his skin, the sign that they could try but not defeat the laws of the Time Lords. Only just...

She took off her boots with a couple of movements and then he made her room on the chaise longue. She laid down, as he opened her black trousers and got rid of them and her socks, with a delicacy of feeling and a passion she would not have pictured him having. His poet hands, his gentlemanly manners were not gone, they were instilled in every movement, in every touch he had for her. She blushed, even if her blood was not flowing, even if her heart was silent. Her soul was reaching out. As their clothes were scattered around the room and little underwear to separate them, she continued to explore him with her hands, and with her kisses, as he felt the softness of her hair between his fingers, the perfume she retained in the crook of her neck. All embarrassment was gone, all silly awkwardness forgotten, every memory powerful yet quiet between them. They removed what little they had left on and finally united. He moved inside her, kissing her still and caressing her still, as he wanted to disappear in her and to fill her with all the sentiment he was made of. He wanted their bodies and souls to be one, for the last time. She held onto him, she moved with him, slowly at first and then faster and faster, at a perfect unison rhythm. They reached climax together, with low yet clear moans of pleasure, holding themselves in that moment for as long as they could. He knew how, surely: he could slow down time, and he helped her stay there with him. He put his hands on the side of her head, and locked her mind to his.

They stayed intertwined their souls and bodies for long human eras and only for a moment: time stopped mattering... at least until they had to separate. Only just.

Until she stayed in his embrace, pretending to fall asleep.

Until he slipped into Morpheus arms, and she slipped from the Doctor's.

Until she had to go. Until she went away.

 

The wine bottle remained open, the glass half drunk, the TARDIS panel sparkling with sorrow, and the stars over the pool and in the landscape died out, and all was darkness.

 

… until her light shone in his acts of kindness, again and again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Akido song by the same name, you can download it here for pay what you want: https://akido.bandcamp.com/track/a-day-in-the-afterlife  
> It is featured in Inside the Mind of Leonardo, a documentary about Leonardo da Vinci, starring Peter Capaldi.
> 
> The swimming pool is a little like this one: http://www.digsdigs.com/photos/10-indoor-swimming-pool-with-star-lights-above.jpg
> 
> The quote the Doctor reads from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is in Chapter 23, one of my favourites.
> 
> Francis Bacon was an Irish painter of striking and powerful talent. He hadn't an easy life, but he left us great art. You can find a collection of his paperbacks and his study in the Hugh Lane Gallery, in Dublin.


End file.
